


Seven Days

by sub_divided



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, FFVII Halloween Week 2020, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27231799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_divided/pseuds/sub_divided
Summary: The rain fell, vertically, through the gap in the plates.Cloud waited, wet but not cold, at the train station.***Cloud and unreliable memories.  For FFVII Halloween Week Day 3, Black Mirror!
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	Seven Days

**Author's Note:**

> Is this story creepy enough for Halloween??? I don't know... it could have been creepier but I didn't really wanna go that direction. 
> 
> <https://ffviihalloween.tumblr.com/>  
> OCT 27 🤖 **Black Mirror** late stage capitalism / mind control / unreliable memories
> 
> Enjoy!

_Seven days, seven more days she'll be comin'  
I'll be waiting at the station for her to arrive  
[Seven more days, all I gotta do is survive.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gckGvo3SWok)_

*

The rain fell, vertically, through the gap in the plates. 

Cloud waited, wet but not cold, at the train station. 

October 1st, according to the newspaper discarded in the bin next to him. 

He’d hiked a week through the wastes to get here, give or take a day. 

Now he knew the date when he’d…

Decided. To show himself in civilization again, after… 

He’d just gotten tired of it. The hiding, the running, the sleeping on the cold ground alone. 

Somewhere in Midgar there was… 

A girl. Someone he knew, from before. 

She lived with her mother, but where else was he gonna go, anyway? 

*

_She been gone ever since I been a child  
Ever since I seen her smile, I ain't forgotten her eyes.  
She had a face that could outshine the sun in the skies._

****

A familiar face brought him back to himself. 

He’d been… 

From his back, squinting up, he saw her looking down at him worriedly. 

That time he’d fallen from the bridge-

That time he’d fallen from the plate-

“Cloud???”

“Hey..” He was relieved she remembered him. He hadn’t been sure she would. 

He reached a hand up to tuck her hair behind her ear, like before. She’d been young - so had he - but she’d been fearless, back then. There’d been a tree outside her window that he’d used to climb in and out, as silently as his training allowed. 

“Your eyes are different,” she observed, marveling. “So you became a Soldier after all?”

Cloud felt something shift, twist, within him, and sharpen. 

“Yeah... “ he said. “I did.”

He had. A while ago. _That was why he wasn’t cold._

“That’s great,” she said, and took his hand - useless, reaching, but falling short - in both of hers, and brought it to her forehead. 

He turned his head. She was crouched next to him, at the edge of the station platform, just outside the bright circle of the electric lights. 

“That’s great, Cloud,” she told him. “I’m glad. I know it was important to you.” 

The rain fell, and it merged with her tears. 

It reminded him of the last time they’d seen each other… 

Two years ago? Three years ago? 

Before the Soldier training, at any rate… 

Wow. Wow. 

He’d actually kept his promise, and become a Soldier. 

That was a plot twist he hadn’t seen coming. 

*

_I been good, I been good while I been waitin'  
Maybe guilty of hesitatin', I just been holdin' on  
Seven more days, all that'll be gone._

*  
She brought him back to her bar. She had a little room on the second floor with one bed, and she told him to sit on it while she got the spare blankets out of storage. 

He’d wanted to embrace her then, had moved to do so, but her reaction had stopped him. Something was wrong, she was afraid of him. _She’d never been afraid of him before._

Each time they’d seen each other, they’d had to sneak around so her mother wouldn’t find them. He’d felt like a spy on a mission behind enemy lines. He might have liked the sneaking around as much as he’d liked the girl. 

But Tifa’s mother had died when they were kids. Hadn't she? That time on the bridge. He’d reached for her-

“You take the bed,” she told him. “I’ll sleep downstairs.” She stood warily, just outside his reach, the comforter held in her arms between them, a barrier. 

“...In the bar? With the mops?”

It was the most he’d said since she’d found him, and she smiled at him then, genuinely, for the first time. 

“Yeah.” 

Cloud pondered this. There was a perfectly good bed, they could share. Top to tail, if necessary. He’d done it before, with-.

***********************************

He clutched his head, and her smile faltered, replaced with a worried look. 

"Are you all right, Cloud???"

That look. _This was Tifa_. Lockhart. Tifa Lockhart. He was Cloud.

Not-

***********************************

Tifa and Cloud. The two of them, together, as children. Making promises that only children would make. 

Cloud felt dizzy. Where before there had been multiple ideas, possibilities, now they collapsed into the image of himself, fourteen, on the water tower. Something he hadn’t known about himself a moment before before reasserted itself in his memory. 

Was he still that innocent? Was Tifa? 

_I’ll come back. I’ll rescue you in a pinch._

“But…”

“It’s okay, Cloud,” she told him. “Let me do this for you.” 

“Besides,” she said, tossing him the blanket and retreating. 

“You look like you could use a real bed.” 

*

_There's kissing in the valley,  
Thieving in the alley,  
Fighting every inch of the way.  
Trying to be tender  
With somebody I remember  
In a night that's always brighter'n the day._

*

Midgar was hard to get used to. Too loud, too bright, too fast, too tight. _Electric lights everywhere_ , but no sunlight, except for what filtered down between the plates, and the hazy red sunrise if you got up early enough. 

And the smell… 

He couldn’t leave Tifa’s room above the bar without reeling. Every overheard conversation was nonsense, white noise, the chattering of birds. After two days Tifa, worried, took him to a clinic nearby.

There was nothing wrong with him. He tried to tell her. It was just the adjustment. He just needed time. 

She left him with a doctor she knew, and returned to her bar. Cloud answered the doctor’s questions in single sentences until his back was turned, then escaped out the back door. He tracked Tifa back to the bar by smell, like a dog. Then he hid in an alley behind her bar, stealing food from the trash, until he felt human enough to go back inside. 

_What am I? What am I?_

He was Cloud. He was a Soldier. He was Tifa’s childhood friend. She was expecting great things from him, things that sounded like too much for someone like him to accomplish. 

But he’d become a Soldier, hadn’t he? If he could beat those odds, anything was possible. 

*

_Seven days, seven more days that are connected_  
Just like I expected, she'll be comin' on forth,  
My beautiful comrade from the north. 

*

Almost a week into Cloud’s stay in Midgar, and he could go outside now.

Though the smell was still terrible. 

He could talk, too, with the bar patrons. He met Johnny and the rest of Tifa’s fanclub. He was still staying in Tifa’s room. If they knew where he slept... Cloud smirked. Then he frowned. Maybe she was staying with one of them... he still didn't know where she was sleeping. Not with the mops, at any rate. Not that it was any of his business. 

He understood now that their relationship was strictly professional. Platonic. He was here to look after her, as per their promise. 

Actually thinking about it, had he ever felt differently? Not that he could recall.

They'd talked about it the other day, at close. Cloud had been stacking the chairs. She’d asked-

“What are you thinking?”

“About what?”

“About… what you want to do, I guess. What are your plans?” 

_What **are** my plans?_

He hadn’t given it much thought, honestly. He knew what he _didn’t_ want to do - run, hide from Shinra, sleep alone on the cold ground. 

What did he _want_ to do? 

He wanted to stay here, with the only person in this city who knew who he was. 

Who’d known him, before-

************************************************

But did it make sense to stay with Tifa? He couldn’t stay in her room forever. Eventually she’d want her bed back, and he’d have to strike out on his own, like he had at fourteen. 

At least he had skills now… yeah, there were a lot of things he could do now. He could fight. He could kill people. He could kill monsters. He could survive-

“I’ll look for work, I guess.” 

“What kind of work?” 

She seemed guarded. Cautious. Maybe she didn’t believe in him. She was totally wrong if she thought he was helpless. Cloud smiled at her, suddenly confident.

“Any work,” he told her breezily, “I’m a Jack of all trades. But maybe mercenary work.” 

He hadn’t planned to say it, but the words in his mouth felt right. He knew he had the skills. 

It made so much sense that he couldn’t believe he’d never thought of it before. 

In fact, after a moment he realized he _had_ thought of it before. 

Again - the twisting, dizzying feeling. Multiple possibilities collapsing into one. Again Cloud suddenly remembered something about himself that he hadn’t realized a moment before. 

Yes. He was a mercenary. 

Man, that week in the wastes had really done a number on his memory, hadn’t it? The pollution out there was no joke. 

“I’m a mercenary,” he told her. “And it’s time I started looking for work.”

“I see.” Tifa seemed to contemplate that, her eyes hooded. 

She seemed like she wanted to say something, but in the end she thought better of it. 

Her eyes wandered away from his, around the room, until they settled on the pinball machine. 

It was busted, he knew that. He’d tried it few times with no luck. 

“In that case... I might know a guy,” she said.

**Author's Note:**

> After fifteen years in fandom here it is... my very first songfic. HA HA HA. 
> 
> Comments welcome here or [on tumblr](https://subdee.tumblr.com/)... Thanks for reading!


End file.
